


From the Dust

by NorroenDyrd



Series: Meraad Astaarit, Meraad Itwasit, Tamassran Aqun [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Diary/Journal, Dragon Age Quest: In Hushed Whispers, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Epistolary, F/M, Flashbacks, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, Heartbreak, Nicknames, Prison, Qunari Culture and Customs, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Tevinter Imperium, Unethical Experimentation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-16
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-12-30 13:57:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12110205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: Issala Adaar - literally, Weapon of Dust - was once a Tamassran, a teacher and mother figure to young Qunari. After defying her peers to protect a student of hers who had turned out to be a Saarebas, she had to abandon her role and try to find a new path in life, which led her from being a test subject for the mages from the Minrathous Circle to free mercenary to something they call 'Herald of Andraste'. And it seems that, with her past heartbreak over the loss of a child that might not have been her own in the literal sense but was still very dear to her, she has a few things in common with an enemy of hers. Written in epistolary form, as notes, journals, and letters.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In the first chapter, Alexius refers to his loved ones with nicknames (mea stella = my star; Pullus = Little Bird). I used this technique partly for the sake of realism (my own mother never refers to me by my name in her private writing, unless it's something serious), and partly because I do not want to draw attention to the narrator's identity when posting this elsewhere, having previously gotten hate for my sympathetic attitude towards Alexius.

***  
  
So here I am. Once again, treading down the hallways and into auditoriums that I once knew like the back on my hand. I really have not visited the Circle as often as I would have liked, what with a political career (or better, an attempt to have one) and private research having taken over my life. Well, at least now Tiberius has rectified that.   
  
The boy is teaching his own class for the first time, I understand, after a period of service on Seheron that his family have done their utmost to make as brief as possible. I have also heard that his time with the Legion has left him quite obsessed with the oxmen and the various ways of killing them. I am all for patriotism, but that sounds somewhat alarming. I will wait and see, I suppose, as a guest at one of Tiberius' lectures. I would bask in the happy illusion that the boy still values my opinion and is willing to accept constructive criticism, but I know him better than this. He just wants to show off. Let him, then.  
  
***  
  
Tiberius is about to start. I will make some notes post factum, because the ceiling over the back row where he has seated me (right behind some young man who seems intent on kissing the girl next to him when no-one is looking; now isn't that familiar) is leaking mercilessly, and will surely ruin my papers if I do not put them away.  
  
***  
  
Well, that was certainly a bit of a novelty. Tiberius has brought quite a trophy from his travels amidst the savages of the Qun: a living, breathing oxwoman that he keeps in a cage and demonstrates to his class like a marketplace curio.  
  
Apparently, his intention is to experiment on her in order to find out the vulnerabilities of her kind; the idea is not new in and of itself, but I do not recall any previous test subjects being flaunted so publicly, in front of a room full of Circle students. I have seen them a few times, locked in secret laboratories and maze-like dungeons, hidden away like other questionable 'projects' of my colleagues. Yes, questionable. I bear no love for the oxmen, and never tire of repeating that the sooner this gruelling campaign against them ends, the faster we can go back to what really matters, rebuilding our homeland - but to keep them around as lab rats is a bit extreme for my liking. I have to wonder what it would take for me to stomach engaging in the same 'research'... But that is not really relevant to the purpose of this entry.  
  
And now that I think of it... The purpose of this entry was to write down impressions of Tiberius' experiments, but having dwelled on what I saw, I find the subject herself far more noteworthy than all of those 'And now, children, let us see what happens if we throw a fire ball at this Qunari' stunts that my former student pulled off.  
  
Tiberius calls her Adaar, which, according to him, is Qunlat for 'weapon' - for he intends to submit any information that he gains, by putting her through this, to the heads of the military, thus contributing to our effort on Seheron. But to me, she did not seem in the least like an instrument of war: on the contrary, she remained remarkably peaceful throughout the whole session, withstanding the onslaught of Tiberius' scorching spells as a statue would, with barely a twitch of muscle disturbing her squarish, slightly lined face.  
  
The boy attributes this to her primitive intelligence, saying that she behaves precisely like a tamed animal - 'a literal ox', dragging a plough submissively, not caring that it is knee-deep in its own droppings. A vivid image, to be sure; and all that I myself have been taught should dictate that I agree with this... But I get this nagging feeling, a tiny bothersome worm gnawing at me from within, that that what the boy says about Adaar is not true. Distasteful even.  
  
When the class came to an end and I was making my way out of the auditorium, I was accosted by Tiberius, who evidently expected me to praise him. As he was prancing around me, seeking to catch my gaze, whereas I, in turn, was averting my eyes and attempting to get away with something dryly polite (because just blasting him out of my way with a lightning charge would have been in poor taste, him once having excelled in my class), I happened to take a closer look at this 'Adaar' subject, who was resting in her cage after being repeatedly frizzled by lightning, encased in ice and subsequently thawed, and set on fire.  
  
Her eyes... Unsettled me. Large and coloured a very inhuman pale yellow, they showed a depth of emotion that could not possibly have occurred in a simple-minded half-animal. The primary overtone that I seem to have detected was... grief.  
  
Adaar is mourning something. Her freedom? Her comrades, whom Tiberius and the other battle mages from the Imperial army must have killed by the dozen? The foolishness of the overzealous Tevinter magelings, some of whom found it very entertaining to cause her pain?  
  
I think I will be coming back here. A few times.  
  
***  
  
I wrote a letter with my observations back home to  _mea stella_ , and she agrees that I should delve deeper into the Adaar matter. Establish contact with her. Learn her life story. Perhaps even try to persuade Tiberius to stop this glorified torture of a being... a being that could be more worthy of pity than any of us could ever have surmised.  
  
It is always unsettling to have your convictions challenged - but if I have had the boldness to try and challenge the convictions of my peers, I should be able to do the same with my own. And  _mea stella_ 's encouragement always gives me strength. I just wish she was there with me - but it would be too petty and selfish to tear her away from her own important research so that she could come and question a caged Qunari with me. And we can always exchange letters. Nearly thirty years together, and the send-your-sweetheart-a-note-a-day tradition still lives on.  
  
  
***  
  
It has been a long day. At least now, I can sit back with a glass of wine and jot down a description of a new public demonstration by Tiberius... Well, not exactly the demonstration itself; I was summoned to a meeting at the Magisterium before I could actually see it. Rather, happened before.  
  
Naturally, the boy thinks that I returned to watch his class - an hour and a half early, no less! - because his brilliance astounded me so much. In truth, of course, what I was aiming for were a few moments alone in the laboratory supply room, where the cage with Adaar had temporarily been placed before the lecture. And, as fate would will it, Tiberius was called away to resolve some technicality or other, and I found myself standing on my own in the middle of the high-vaulted, dusty room, with shelved packed full with cobwebbed apparatuses and tall ingredient jars behind my back, and the heavily padlocked cage, with a horned silhouette crammed into an awkward sitting pose inside it, straight ahead of me.  
  
I must admit that I felt an instinctive surge of protest when I decided to treat the oxwoman as I would treat a human - but I suppressed that impulse and made an effort to address Adaar as graciously as I could.  
  
'My sympathies,' I said, catching and steadily holding the gaze of her yellow eyes - which, again, had none of the primal hostility we attribute to her kind. 'I have noticed that you are in grief. Are you, perhaps, lamenting being imprisoned here?'  
  
She frowned, her expression growing more concentrated, as a student's would, when a teacher is asking a difficult question. I realized that she had difficulty understanding me (and, indeed, I did not remember her speaking during the last session). Tiberius would have jumped in with rants about primitive intelligence again - and I myself was just about to fall prey to the same prejudice, when the oxwoman suddenly tore apart her lips, which were dry and chafed (probably because a dog's bowl of water in the corner of her cage was not nearly enough to sustain her)... And spoke.  
  
Her voice was deep and hoarse, with a thick accent, but she articulated every word very carefully, with a conscious effort to make herself understood.  
  
'My speech is poor. Only know Qunlat. Qunari do not... must not speak if speech is poor. If... not... Not perfect'.  
  
That fascinating statement was perfectly in line with the rumours  _Pullus_  shared with me, regarding the oxman mercenaries he had met in Orlais. It has been suggested that, since that stringent philosophy of theirs requires that they be perfect at a given skill or not pursue it at all, most Qunari do not even attempt to engage in banter in a language they are not fluent in, thus making humans mistakenly believe that they simply do not have enough brains for a civilized conversation. I am certain that  _Pullus_  will be delighted to hear that what he told me is true. I will describe my interactions with Adaar to him as well, probably in another letter; I have been pestering him with those just as frequently as his mother (well, what am I to do, if I miss them both). But first, to lay out the narrative in my journal, before I forget.  
  
I had to interrupt my exchange with Adaar with a swift sequence of Fade Steps, transporting myself from the supply room to the dining area and back again, and bringing back a carafe of water and a soft loaf of wheat bread that I hastily snatched off the nearest table. An impulsive action, more suitable for a first-year student than a seasoned researcher. But at least I had sense enough to seek out witnesses among the handful of people who had wandered in for what I believe is called a 'snack' - and demonstrate to them that I was the one taking the bread of water; because I know for certain that if I hadn't, the servants would have been the ones to blame, and I know some of those elves personally. They are good servants, hard-working and efficient, and it would have been unworthy of me to get them punished for nothing.  
  
When I brought the refreshments to Adaar, the room was as empty as I had left it, so I could see to her strength being restored in peace, without being hounded by bothersome questions why I was fussing over a caged ox so much. While she was reaching through the bars for the food and drink, tense and wary and yet smiling a faltering smile, I also cast a healing spell on her, just in case: last time, Tiberius had been far from thorough when he patched up the markings of his experiments.  
  
She did not gulp down all of her modest rations in one swallow, apparently aware that doing so would be harmful. Yet another observation in favour of her intelligence.   
  
And when she was finished, she wiped her mouth, as tactfully as she could (which was something of a pleasant surprise), cleared her throat, and breathed out a very sincere, 'Thank you, Tevinter-man'.  
  
Trying not to chuckle at the clumsiness of her speech, I telekinetically picked up a sheet of paper and a sharpened, charred drawing stick that happened to be lying around underneath a dragonling skeleton in the corner, and slipped the supplies into the cage.  
  
'If you are bad at talking,' I told Adaar, 'Perhaps you can draw your story? Draw what... makes you sad? If I know more about you... I might be able to help'.  
  
The oxwoman's triangular ears twitched, at the sound of a word she must have recognized. She smiled again - wryly and mirthlessly - and said,  
  
'You cannot help, Tevinter-man. I am... lost. I am... I am... Issala. But I can draw. I draw... good. Before... Before, I draw for... imekari. Small... Small man'.  
  
She made a gesture, holding her palm a few inches over the floor, miming something - or someone - very small. 'Small man'; of course, as I was soon to find out, she meant 'child'. So, logically, 'imekari' must be the Qunari word for 'child'. I will have to double-check that with someone who is better versed in the oxmen's culture; but there is a solid chance of me being right.   
  
I still do not know what 'Issala' means, however. Could that be her name???  
  
Going back to learning Adaar's - Issala's - life story. After taking a stack of paper from me, she began scribbling, her movements growing more and more assured as she progressed, leading me to the conclusion that she used to draw quite often at some point, and enjoyed it greatly. This was certainly the most animated I had seen her up to that point; she even laughed softly to herself, as the bold charcoal strokes brought back some fond memory.  
  
I confess: when she handed the first paper sheet back to me, I was stunned. Not only by the fluid curls and slopes of her linework and the stark, well-placed dashes of shading (I do not pretend to be an art expert, but this was definitely something a primitive mind could not have produced), but also by the theme of her creation.  
  
She made a series of sketches, and all of them could not be further removed from the gory scenes of bloody battle her kind seem to be at home in. No, those were peaceful, I would even say rustic images: a woman (Issala herself, most likely, judging by her built and the outline of her horns) taking a group of children on a walk, pointing out the stars in the fuzzy charcoal sky, reading out a book to a circle of youngsters gathered round her, crouching in front of a chubby, stub-horned little thing that had apparently come to her with a complaint, sternly gesturing at a lanky youth that must have disobeyed her...  
  
It was an almost surreal experience, being shown the side of the ox people that I had never really thought about; realizing, with new every drawing that Issala placed before me, that her and I were more alike than I might have imagined. She is also a teacher, or, well, used to be before she was captured - in charge of little oxlings of various ages, whom she once guided and protected and provided with whatever knowledge they needed to grow up into the ferocious warriors we see on the other side of the barricades.   
  
Now that I am writing it down, a thought has just occurred to me: they say the oxmen treat all of their kind the way so many of us treat our slaves, not as individuals but as tools performing a certain function... So perhaps the patient submissiveness with which Issala endured Tiberius' experiments... perhaps it was also her continuing to act in line with the function she had been assigned, to the very last? She was  _teaching_  the class as much as Tiberius was, by allowing the Circle students to learn how to best torture her; she was helping them become educated, in her own way! A morbid notion - and yet, one that cannot but invoke a degree of sympathy within me.  
  
Who knows what else I might have discovered, had I not been found by an elven messenger, sent to inform me that my presence was required at this dreary meeting. All I had time to do was to thank Issala for her time, and to leave her sketches laid out around her cage. To give Tiberius some food for thought.  
  
***  
  
I write this on a carriage taking me away on A Business Trip of Utmost Importance... Yes, I could not resist the temptation of sarcastically capitalising the letters, because, frankly, I am very bitter about this whole thing. The journey might last so long that I will end up missing the Satinalia holidays and the family get-together.  _Mea stella_  understands - but I miss her so much already, her and our little  _Pullus_  (amazing, isn't it, how I can both be proud of his academic accomplishments and, at the same time, fawn over him as if he were still five years old, still using the same fond nickname I had for him when he was, indeed, tiny and chubby like a sparrow or some other small bird... I wonder if Issala would have understood).  
  
So, as I need to kill time somehow, and magically speeding up this wretched ride is not yet possible at the current stage of our research, I might as well reminisce a little about my last meeting with Issala.  
  
Just like the previous time, I did not attend the actual lecture by Tiberius; I do not even think there were going to be any more of those at that point, as the courses had come to a conclusion, and the Circle was filled with the bustle of preparing for the upcoming public examinations. As a member of the Magisterium, I was invited to sit on the committee, and part of that included making certain that none of the arcane equipment the students were going to rely on had been tampered with (as everyone knows perfectly well, this usually implies finding signs of 'tampering' among the tools used by some unfortunate Laetan or Liberatus who has dared to be more talented than an Altus, but I never join charades of this kind; writing this down ought to at least somehow alleviate the vitriol that overcomes me when I as much as think about the practice).  
  
After the inspection, I was the last to leave the supply room, and as I was standing in the doorway, I distinctly heard a husky whisper, calling for me from Tiberius' favourite cage,  
  
'Tevinter-man... Tevinter-man... Please come here...'  
  
I was a bit astounded by the hasty readiness with which I turned around and strode across the room - just as by the concern with which I began charging up a fresh dose of restorative magic, for easing any new injuries she may have suffered in my absence. She really has grown on me, this test subject who is more than she seems.  
  
'Did Tiberius see your drawings?' I asked, when the bright healing aura began to fade. 'What did he think of them?'  
  
'He laughed,' Issala said simply, and pushed her hand through a gap between the bars to scoop up the soft grey dust that was scattered round the cage and that I myself had only just noticed.  
  
He laughed. Not only that, he seemed to have burned the drawings down; turned them into ash; refused to read into them, to see their worth as an insight into the Qunari's nature. I cannot say I was surprised by that.  
  
What did startle me was what Issala said next.  
  
'I am sad... by this,' she said, letting the dust trickle through her fingers. 'But when I draw... for you... It was... Good. To - to remember. To think. My... kadan...'  
  
She laid her hand on her chest, indicating that 'kadan' must be the Qunari word for 'heart'.  
  
'Less heavy now. I want to draw again. Show... The thing... You ask before. Why I be... I am... like this'.  
  
I could not find the writing supplies in their previous place (Tiberius must have removed them, after he was done mocking Issala), but I happened to have some on my person, as I needed them to take notes of the exam preparations. When I passed them to her, she fell upon them like a falcon upon its prey, and almost ripped through the paper with the darting motions of her quill. The lines she traced were like bleeding, mangled cuts - and not just because she was using ink rather than charcoal this time.  
  
The story she shared with me was much darker than the simple idyllic reminiscences of a teacher surrounded by children; every deep shadow, every sharp angle throbbed with raw agony.  
  
I saw a Qunari child - a girl, if the long clothes and braided hairstyle were any indication, though at this young age it was still hard to tell. She had long zigzags piercing her palms - symbols of magic, no doubt. Next to this portrait, was a messier, vaguer sketch of a Qunari mage, with the mouth sewn shut and a thick collar round the neck, crossed by a few rounded strokes of ink indicating chain links. Oh yes, I have heard of these horrific implements; the oxmen are even more brutal towards their mages than the southerners with their widespread abuse of the Rite of Tranquility.  
  
Underneath these two pictures, of the mage girl and the tangled web of lines shaping the vision of her future fate, Issala drew herself, tall and menacing, with the child cowering behind her back. Facing her, were a number of advancing Qunari - faceless, shapeless, just black ink stains, really, with horns added on top. After that, the paper sheet was crossed by a few slashing, aggressive lines, most likely symbolizing a battle - and then, Issala ran out of space and had to use a second sheet.  
  
That one was almost entirely taken up by the image of a huge fiery pillar, the child's silhouette floating in the middle; her small limbs were spread out wide, and around each of them, Issala added the contour of another limb, thick and clawed and spiky, like that of a demon. The young Qunari must have succumbed to fear (not in the least bit for her teacher, who had defied her own kind so bravely to keep her from being chained), and fallen prey to a being from the Fade. The lamentable fate of untrained, unsupervised mages who grow up hating their power rather than embracing it.  
  
And finally, in the very last drawing, I saw Issala again, the sole survivor of the skirmish, kneeling amid the black blobs that, as I guessed, had to be the bodies of the dead Qunari, and cradling the body of her student in her arms. Some parts of her figure were traced not by lines, but by clusters of bold black dots, creating the illusion that she was crumbling away into dust, turning into the very ash she had just now sifted through her fingers.  
  
When I laid the sheet down, my hands trembling a little, I met Issala's eyes - and read the same staggering grief in them that drew my attention to her in the first place.  
  
So this is what happened to her. This is what crushed her spirit, and led to her being imprisoned, away from her home and her people. She lost her child - not hers by blood, perhaps, but one that was still very dear to her. And this - this is the kind of loss that will hardly fail to touch my heart. There is no greater treasure for me than my child, my baby  _Pullus_ , and I cannot fathom what I will do if he is ever taken from me. So anyone who has been deprived of this treasure deserves at least a polite expression of condolences, oxwoman or no.  
  
'I am sorry that this happened to you,' I remember saying, 'And that I forced you to relive this'.  
  
'It is good,' she shook her head. 'It is good... outside, not in... kadan. Good Qunari... do not think this, but I am not... not Qunari now. I am Issala'.  
  
And again, she picked up a handful of ash and watched it thoughtfully as it passed between her fingers.  
  
'Issala'.  
  
That was when it dawned on me that 'Issala' is not a personal name. It is Qunari for 'dust'. This woman has been calling herself 'Dust' - a pretty bloodcurdling metaphor now that I think of it.  
  
I did my best to share a few more words of sympathy with her - even reaching out to touch her hands through the bars - until the very moment when the exams began, and I had to leave her. Again. A heartbroken woman with no beloved child by her side and no purpose in life apart from entertaining overly ambitious Tevinter youths with the sight of her physical pain.  
  
I wonder what I can do to help her? In one of her letters,  _mea stella_  suggested that we offer Tiberius money to take her off his hands, as we would do with a grossly mistreated elf. Perhaps I will see to it after this trip of mine is done and we are all together again.  
  
***  
  
Home at last. And in time for Satinalia, too. Odd that  _mea stella_  and the baby are not back yet, but I would not be surprised if these winter rains turned the roads into innavigable rivers (Demetrius does try his best, but everything in Ye Mighty Empire collapses faster than you fix it).  
  
Speaking of which, I just heard some pretty derisive gossip that Tiberius lost half of his equipment in the downpour when he was transporting it from the Circle to his family estate for the holidays. This, apparently, included the cage with the 'Qunari test subject'; when the heaviest bout of rain cleared, it was found on the roadside - empty.  
  
She must have escaped - all the better for her! I can only hope that the boy does not hire those brutish slave hunters to bring her back; and if he does, that she eludes them. I never thought I would say this about an oxwoman, but I believe she deserves to start her life anew. Maybe as a mercenary in Antiva or Orlais somewhere. I wonder if I will ever...  
  
Ah. A knock on the door. Someone has finally made it home for Satinalia!  
  
***  
  
DUST.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At a later point in her life, when her fluency in the Trade Tongue, both oral and written, reached the level of a confident master, Inquisitor Issala meticulously re-transcribed her early notes, especially ones concerning her relationship with the various members of the Inner Circle and other people dear to her. Thus, what we are about to see below, in the first and second section of the story, is not as riddled with grammar and punctuation mistakes and clumsy wordings as it initially was. She has also expanded some passages that seemed shamefully primitive to her, her vocabulary and text structuring clearly having been influenced by some of her more educated companions.

I am Issala. This means Dust.   
  
I did feel like dust, for the longest time - because I had lost my way and my purpose; I was torn between feeling ashamed over defying the Qun, and being convinced that what I had done to protect my most cherished Imekari (Imekari! Not Saarebas!) was the right thing, and then feeling ashamed again, because of this conviction, and also a bit frightened - because what if it was the first sign of me going mad without the Qun's guidance? All of these thoughts burned at my mind, so that it crumbled away, like brittle black cinders - like dust.  
  
I no longer feel this way - well, not all of the time - as I seem to be finding my purpose once more, in way that I would not have had enough imagination to predict.  
  
It was good, being found by the Valo-Kas in the steaming, lashing jungle, and having my spirit, which had had all the colours washed off it in the Tevinter rain, repainted anew, into the bright splashes of mercenary vitaar.   
  
It was good, travelling from one corner of Thedas to another and completing contracts as a blade for hire, and knowing that I was helping someone, that I was making problems go away, like I had once done when some of my Imekari came to me for help and advice. It was good, receiving rewards for what I did, especially if it was not the cold, soulless gold, but something I could carry around as a part of me, a token and a reminder of my new role - like these horn sheaths an Antivan merchant hand-fitted for me out of gratitude for salvaging his goods and bringing his men back home safely, almost completely unharmed by the highwaymen that had tried to rob them.  
  
And it is doubly good now, fighting demons, closing Rifts, stopping the darkness from spreading - because this way, I am helping even more people. All the people, elves and humans and even an occasional dwarf; nobles and commoners, soldiers and priests - everyone. Not just those who can afford to hire me.  
  
I am Issala. This means Dust. And while I am more solid and grounded now, less likely to fall apart and be carried off by the wind like flakes of ash, the name remains. Because outside the Qun, people's names... I cannot bring myself to call them 'basra', I just cannot... I never could. So, yes, as I was writing just now, people's names do not always reflect their essence. They are just sounds you make when you want someone to turn their head - and maybe smile when they recognize your voice. I guess I could have chosen a more fitting nickname for myself, the way The Iron Bull did. But what is done is done. Everyone knows me as Issala now. Issala Adaar sometimes - because I do not forget how I was called when those Tevinter battlemages captured me, on my flight away from the Qun, and took me with them, so that I had to spend some time as a training dummy for their Imekari. Before the cart that carried my cage from one place to another broke apart in the heavy winter rain, and I decided to give escaping a try.  
  
Well, that was a long introduction. My hand hurts now. But I had to write something in here, because although my Trade Tongue speech is far better now, and using my voice to shape the words is not a disgrace any more, my letters still come out crooked and confused sometimes. Seeing my struggle with outlining my thoughts on paper, Lady Josephine kindly gifted me with a journal to practice in - a wise choice, as I know that practice is supposed to make perfect (this is what my little Imekari learned from me).  
  
So, I guess, this was a very long-winded way of saying 'This journal belongs to Issala'. I could have stopped right there, but my memories got the better of me, as it so often happens. I have too many things to remember.  
  
Speaking of which: I will rest my hand now. And then draw. Draw the scenes from my memories - memories that belong only to me and the young Tevinter human with the curious facial hair. Dorian. I hope I spelled that right.   
  
The things that we have seen still haunt me in my dreams, clawing at my mind from the inside and making me wake up gasping and drenched in cold sweat. Solas said that it was spirits trying to untangle the mess in my own mind, and that it could be a good idea to put my visions into drawings: this way, my conscience would 'process' (as he puts it) this disastrous future that never happened, and I would move on, and the spirits of the Fade would leave me be. Well, let us hope this works. It has worked before, after all, when I listened to the voice of the one Tevinter who did not enjoy tormenting me, and drew myself mourning the little one whom they had insisted on calling Saarebas, whom they had come to take from me, and ended up provoking, driving into a fearful frenzy that consumed her, her own magic tearing her apart.   
  
I felt more at ease when I poured those memories out on drawing paper, so it might work the same way for these... Fade things. Haunting things, dark things... Dangerous things, the Qunari would have called them, a temptation from the demons, something you could get re-educated for. But I must say that I like this method of coping better.  
  
To the drawing clipboard, then. There is still plenty of time before all the mages are ready to march and we can head out to close the Breach.  
  
***  
  
So much has happened just now, in just a few minutes' time. Almost like on that day when they came for my beloved Imekari, and she clung on to me, so tiny and soft and quivering with scared sobs - and I held her close and faced the Arvaraad, and hoped that they would read in my eyes and my pose that I was not about to let them have her.  
  
That fight did not even last a quarter of an hour. What took place today did not either - but in both cases I felt like time had slowed down, to try and make room for all the chaos and confusion.  
  
I will write again now. Then draw. To make sense of it all. And to stop my heart from beating so madly that it keeps trying to push my lungs out of my throat.    
  
Here is what transpired (I believe this is the right word; Solas taught me to spell it) since I made my last entry.  
  
I was just finishing up one of the dark future drawings, seated quite comfortably in the little room where Lady Josephine receives her visitors, when someone's agitated yelling came through the door (which Lady Josephine had left open because she was expecting some dwarves about the lyrium shipments for our mages, and wanted to hear them come in).  
  
We both leapt up, sticking our clipboards and notes under our arm, and ran out. Not a moment later, poor Lady Josephine (who was rustling about around my waist's level, like one of those brightly coloured birds I used to show the groups of Imekari when we explored the wilds together) was almost knocked off her feet by a guard who had leapt out of the passage to the dungeons, so nervous that his very armour seemed to sweat.  
  
'Curse that evil blighter!' he squeaked (I am trying my best to put everyone's exact words down here, as training my memory was very useful both for that old, now crumbled and erased Tamassran self, and the newer mercenary self... It might be good for the Herald self too).  
  
'Curse that evil blighter! Scared the pants off me, he did, with his evil magic!'  
  
Of course, Josephine and I instantly understood who he was talking about - we saw it in each other's eyes when we exchanged a silent glance. We do not have too many prisoners, and the only one to (supposedly) be able to use 'evil magic' would be... that shade from my past. The one who advised me to tell my Imekari's tale through drawings. The very same magister who tried to ease my loneliness when I was Adaar, a wild horned thing kept in a cage for Tevinter Imekari to study, and then, in a most unexpected twist, appeared in my life again, as a thief of mages and a being of darkness that I had to fight to set time straight.   
  
Despite this shift in his nature, I have still tried to repay him for the little friendly gestures he shared with 'Adaar'. I have visited him a few times - which I have not had the sufficient (there is another word I know how to spell right now) time to write about yet; or the right words, either, as my throat somehow grows tight and my eyes begin to burn when I stop and think back to the empty, lifeless gaze with which he would always greet me.   
  
I will have to sort through the memories of these visits as well - but for now, I will only write that I know how he is feeling. Like dust. Like another, Tevinter Issala. Alone, defeated and without purpose. With his Imekari doomed to die, no matter what he did to save him. And knowing that, I could not imagine him suddenly deciding to turn to 'evil magic' again. There would simply be no point.  
  
So my voice may have boomed a bit too loudly when I asked 'What do you mean?'. At least, it looked this way, as the guard seemed to sort of melt down, shrinking a few inches.  
  
'The V-Vint just sat there as usual, gaping into darkness,' he explained with a stammer. 'And then boom - he conjured up these sharp bits of floaty ice, like blue razors! I opened his cell door and was just about to whack him with my sword before he attacked me first - but he turned the cursed things on himself! And that's what scared me: I thought he was gonna make a fountain of blood and start maleficcing, but it turned out that he just wants to off himself. Bit of a relief, innit - one less villain to put up with'.  
  
And here it comes again. This hammering heartbeat. Remembering these words has made me short of breath again.   
  
Must steady myself. And rest.  
  
Yes, that does it. Now I am better. I don't know for certain why my blood quickened so much, either now or then, when the guard had not even properly finished yet, and I was already racing through the Chantry, the world slowing down around me almost like when I fought for my Imekari, and screamed for a healer.  
  
I... I guess I really wanted him to live. This man from Tevinter who once came to me with his talk and his concern and his offering of food, and made sure that  _I_  lived, that I let go of at least a bit of my pain, that I did not turn completely into dust. I wanted him to live, and to rise about his own dust, that dark and heavy and suffocating dust that had changed him so much. I wanted - I still do - him to be my 'Tevinter-man' again, with a living warmth in his eyes and no bitterness in his voice. I want him to have a purpose that would make him happy, sincerely happy, not blindly feverish like he was when he repeated the words of the Elder One, or when, in the bleeding darkness of the very wrong future, he insisted that the mindless ghoul by his side was still his Imekari.  
  
And so I ran, as fast as I could, while my maddened heartbeat counted the urgent passing of seconds - and then grabbed the very first mage I came across, tucking him under the arm that was free of all my papers (while he waved his little human fists around and tried to protest) and whirled back to the dungeons. As it happened, the mage I collected was Dorian. Curious coincidence: he, too, remembers the Tevinter-man that existed before the dust took over; and far better than I do, since, at a time long gone now, Dorian had been to him what my Imekari once was to me. A student - and, perhaps, in a way, a member of what they outside the Qun call 'family'  
  
Maybe this is why, up to this moment that I am trying to describe, Dorian has been so reluctant to visit his teacher, either together with me, or alone.  
  
'I do not think I am quite ready to deal with the man he has become', he would tell me.   
  
And I think I understand what he meant: I certainly would not wish for any of my Imekari to see me in a cage, beaten down and empty-eyed.  
  
And I also think that perhaps it was cruel of me to drag him to the dungeons like this, and have him work his healing magic - but in the end, it all turned out for the best. More or less.  
  
When I finally made by way down the slippery stone steps to the cells and set Dorian on his feet, he staggered a little, like he was a soldier coming ashore. It must have been the sight of all the blood - though he had not seemed squeamish to me when we had to leap over those humming, infected red crystals and walk through gore-splattered torture chambers (he had even made jokes about the 'decor'). I thought of laying my hand on his shoulder to let him know I was there to support him (like I would do with any discomforted Imekari) - but he brushed me off and walked swiftly through the wide-open cell door, his breath coming out in a little huff that made me wonder if his heart was hammering like mine.  
  
'You stupid old man!' he exclaimed, with pure, refreshing green light growing from his fingers like supple leafy branches, twining round the body on the floor, while the air in the dungeon suddenly began to smell like... like spring. Clear water mixed in with some slightly sweet plant sap.  
  
It is beautiful to take in, the sight and rippling sound and peculiar scent of healing magic. Oh, if my Imekari were alive, she might have become a healer; she might have used her power to close wounds and cull the flow of blood the way Dorian did - and then nobody would have dared to call her 'dangerous ...  
  
Yes, there is a tear drop in the place of the word 'thing' right here. But I did not only shed it because I still grieve for the poor lost Imekari (and I do grieve for her; I miss her so much, and all the other Imekari, too, the ones that lived but will now never cross paths with me again). I was also more than a bit... overwhelmed (that is the word, I think)  by the memory of Dorian's voice, crackling, ever so quietly, from within, like that curious thing called 'ice' that covers the surface of the Haven lake.  
  
'You stupid old man,' he repeated, gradually lowering himself to his knees and taking up the bloodied body in his arms; holding his teacher just like the way he had done when we had to kill him in the dark future, because he had unleashed demons upon us.   
  
'It is enough that I watched you die already!' he repeated, his magic flaring ever brighter, ever hotter, like the brightest sun of summer, pulsing in time with his words. 'And I don't mean when you were shot through the heart by that snarling monstrosity your bloody experiments had turned Spymaster Leliana into! I mean every step that we made in your... your clichéd evil lair! Every step - every fucking step! - was watching you die! Along with the world!'  
  
'Dorian...'   
  
The magic ebbed into semi-darkness; the spring freshness and the summer heat gave way to the dry autumn rustle of a very weak, but still familiar voice.  
  
'Dorian... Why... I didn't...'  
  
'I think he will live,' Dorian declared, taking a deep breath, his voice once more steady and carelessly jovial, like when he grinned at the Rift we had to close together in the Redcliffe Chantry. 'Do see to it that he is put under better supervision... And maybe send him that fruit basket?'  
  
We stayed behind a bit longer, making sure that the imprisoned Tevinter-man was out of danger, and explaining to people who had come rushing in (like Cassandra, her sword bared) that there was nothing to worry abo...  
  
Oh no. Oh no. I just realized. Oh no.  
  
I have left my dark future drawings scattered all over the cell floor.  
  
What if he sees them?   
  
Oh no.  
  
I have to run.  
  
***  
  
'I have brought you some - not sufficiently sharp! - writing utensils. Please occupy yourself with them rather than staring at the wall. It will be healthier'.  
  
This is what Dorian said, during his second visit after the... incident. He did not stay long, using the expedition to close the Breach as an excuse to leave; but, judging by the way he averted his eyes, he is still discomforted by talking to me. Perhaps he will never forgive me, which would be quite understandable; I certainly have no intention of forgiving myself... But at least, he has become invested in my survival, which is more than I deserve.  
  
It feels so odd, writing all of this down; as though my soul (or whatever sentient living essence is supposed to inhabit this useless, weary old body) is returning to me, after observing so many of my wretched little twitches as an indifferent, tremendously tired stranger. I am still not convinced that there is any reason for me to look forward to tomorrow - but this activity, this process of writing, gives me something to focus on, fills the otherwise empty, meaningless moments.  
  
So... What shall I write about? Recount, once again, the crushing feeling of despair that weighed my heart down as if it were a flabby, raggedy flesh sack which gradually filled up to the brim with stones? Or maybe describe, in minute detail, the motion of my hand aiming an ice shard at my own chest, driven like a puppet's limb by some unseen string, while my numb, detached mind registered the motion dully, lazily even? Or talk, talk, talk, until I run out of paper, about my beautiful wife, my darling son; what they looked like, up to the tiniest dimple and mole that I could point out with my eyes closed; how their laugh sounded; what their favourite condiment was; what they mumbled in sleepy annoyance when the servants came in to remind them that it was time to get up? And thus, make the last floppy shreds of my heart bleed?  
  
Perhaps I will do that. Later. If I am not allowed to end my own miserable existence, I can at least relish in punishing myself, over and over, with reminders of what I lost - and how pathetically I lost it too!  
  
But for now, I - somehow - want most of all to write about Issala.  
  
I should hate her, I suppose. Not just because hating her would have greatly furthered my mission to serve the Elder One; but also because I have my own, very personal reasons.  
  
It is her who is now leading a contingent of mages - my mages! the mages I so skillfully manipulated into becoming pawns for my grand scheme! - to close the Breach, thus erasing the disruptions that have made it possible to manipulate the Fade to a scale unseen before. This might make any further time travel difficult, or maybe impossible, for all I know; this will put the final, irreversible stop to all my attempts to set right the one great wrong that began it all: not being there for my family when they needed me, not being able to shield them from the blighted monsters, perhaps even give up my own life so that they could go on with theirs, mother and son, happy and safe.  
  
And it was her, the... the meddlesome oxwoman, as a proper Tevinter would have called her, that ran to get help before I could bleed to death; it was her who denied me the succour of oblivion after all my work was thrown into shambles, and the last chance to help my boy slipped away.  
  
I should hate her. But I do not. No matter how deep I reach into my half-shattered self, I find only a few traces of frustration and despair - but no ferocious loathing that might have been expected. I wonder what this says about me... Have I gotten so unhinged that a simple sensation of another's hand in mine instantly turns me into a devoted lap dog? Who knows? Who cares? Certainly not me.  
  
As fate would have it, when Dorian and Issala (and the rest of the gawking onlookers) left me to rest, and I recovered enough to be able to process my surroundings, I realized that there were sheets of paper strewn over my cell's floor. I was still drained after my little... escapade with the ice shards, so it was some mechanical impulse rather than curiosity that moved me to pick up and examine the sheets closest to my flat straw-filled bedroll (which is not much shabbier than the bedding in the Redcliffe Arl's estate, incidentally... Oh, what do you know, I am being snide! Truly an excellent defensive mechanism).  
  
I instantly recognized the contents of the papers as Issala's artwork, with the telltale stark black lines and sketchy silhouettes that had a way of saying more than some of the most detailed Orlesian oil paintings. The contents did not exactly shock me, as I was still too stupefied to feel any truly strong emotion - but there was an undeniable dull pang of pain occasionally disturbing me as I leafed through the drawings.  
  
The first sketch that caught my eye was an inked figure that looked very much like this southern mage, Fiona (my primary 'target' when I rewound time to the Conclave's aftermath), writhing in evident pain as enormous, venous crystals ripped their way out of her body. Dashed across the paper over her head, in clumsy, a bit child-like letters, were the words, 'Harvestmere, 9:42 Dragon': Issala was trying to document the events of the alternative year that Dorian had so skillfully prevented from coming to pass. An inner voice told me that nothing particularly encouraging must have taken place during that timeline - and I was right.  
  
The drawings that I saw next depicted Redcliffe castle in ruins: desolate, wrecked rooms filled with more crystal growths (which, by a morbid coincidence, had gotten coloured bright red with a splash of my own blood while the papers were lying on the floor). Next to those little snapshots of destruction, was a larger picture: a jagged black line of crumbling walls against the background of funnel-like clouds that had chunks of earth and overturned statues hovering among them, as if the Fade and the waking world had become one.  
  
And all the free space in between was occupied by different renditions of the silhouettes of two warriors, a huge male Qunari and a smaller human woman, whose profile I had definitely seen before. They had both been with Issala during the 'negotiations' in the castle, and I am guessing they stayed on to live through the timeline, while Issala and Dorian skipped a year. Like Fiona,  they doubled over with pain, crystalline spikes protruding out of their spines, the way I had seen happen with the Elder One's Red Templar honour guard - and the Elder One himself for that matter. Sometimes, Issala drew their limbs fragmented, like mosaic shards loosely pieced together with gaps in between; and sometimes, she added trails of dark smoke circling round them like rope coils, each inky wisp ending in a clawed hand that could, with the same degree of probability, be both an actual manifestation of dark magic that tormented Issala's companions, or just a metaphor for their suffering.  
  
A few of the following pages were filled up with countless angles of the same unnaturally gaunt, withered face, eyes like pale fires framed by dark circles of wrinkled flesh, with twisting black veins trailing out of their corners like lightning bolts. The face's shape, along with the remnants of a broad ragged hood and thinned down strands of hair that reached to the level of the jaw, made it reminiscent of that Nightingale woman, the Inquisition's Spymaster - the one who commanded the scouts that slit my Venatori guards' throats in Redcliffe, and the one who oversaw my arrest. I am still not certain which version of her is more terrifying.  
  
There was writing peppered in among the faces of Nightingale, as well, not all of it legible (as some of the letters were smudged by what looked like tear splashes, and others were facing in the wrong direction, indicating that Issala was still figuring out the common human alphabet). But I did make out one phrase,  
  
'Blight experiments'.  
  
And when I read them to myself, several times, my pained pang reached one of its strongest points. Blight experiments. I said to myself: this - this deformity was my doing, wasn't it? I must have thought that a blood transfusion, or maybe tissue transplant, or... No, I can't finish this. I must move on, or else I fear I will rip my notes apart.  
  
After the grizzly portraits of the Nightingale, came one more, unfinished, with a bold stroke of ink across the face. Perhaps Issala had made it by accident, as her sketching was interrupted by something; that is the most likely explanation - but for me, this cross-out marking will always  have a bit of a symbolic meaning. Because that face was mine.  
  
What I felt when I looked into my own eyes, outlined with deep ink shadows, their pupils tiny and half-hidden by white circles showing an insane glimmer - it was comparable to the jolt of fear and guilt that punctured my gut and then thrust itself, spear-like, into my heart, at the sound of that question my poor boy asked me, voice rising in pitch in a tone of disbelief and betrayal,  
  
'Do you know what you sound like?'  
  
I knew the answer to that in my heart; I would have known even if Dorian had not provided it (making a dramatic entrance, ever true to his self). I knew, I have always known, what I have become, and what I would have turned myself into in the future, for the sake of giving another chance at a happy, fulfilled life to a precious child that deserved it more than me. And that drawing, that screaming, twisted face, etched all over with agonized and enraged lines and traces of tears... It only confirmed my own suspicions.  
  
In the dark future, I would have been a monster. Actually, I think it safe to say that I already am one. After all, this is one of the reasons why, after all these endless hours of rotting in my cell, I finally decided to try and put myself out of my misery. Because continuing to live would not only have been painful, after all of my losses. It would have been disgusting.  
  
But, apparently, she thinks differently. The Herald of Andraste, the impossible survivor of the Temple of Sacred Ashes, she who refused to become erased from time, she who went from a laboratory subject of an pretty run-of-the-mill Tevinter researcher to the rival of rising god... She thinks differently - and, again (because these are my own damn notes, and I will repeat myself and go around in circles as much as I want), I cannot bring myself to hate her for this.  
  
Because, as I was in the middle of peering down at the starkly hatched lines that sculpted my own monstrous image, she walked into the corridor leading up to my cell again, and commanded the guard to unlock the door and move out of the way. Because she burst inside, a gust of fresh free wind disrupting the stagnation of confinement - and, curiously reversing the roles we had once assumed in Tevinter, sat by my side and rested her hands over mine. Because she said to me,  
  
'This is not you. This is just a nightmare. Smoke. Dust. You can still become yourself. You can still rise from the dust. Like I did. I know how you feel, and I want your wounds to close like mine'.  
  
And because when I looked up at her, my fist clasped just slightly under the four soft points of warmth that were her fingertips, and asked her in a hoarse undertone, 'Why? I tried to kill you,' she replied,  
  
'I would have tried to kill you too, if doing this would bring my Imekari back'.  
  
I do not hate her. And as I write about her, entertaining myself with images of her scarred grey face, I have... I have just now caught myself feeling... A manner of melancholy, I think. With a bitter tinge of regret.  
  
I have seen what the Elder One is capable of. Even if the Breach vanishes from the sky, even if some of the demons fall back, he still has enough power to bend the world to his whim. A storm will still come - for Issala, for myself, for us all. And when it is unleashed, when the Elder One punishes her for freeing the mages that were to be an offering to bolster Tevinter's glory, she will lose everything. All the people she may have saved, all the acclaim she may have gathered. And in the end, her live. Because if not me, the Elder One will easily find another servant to get her out of the picture... Or maybe do it himself. And... And I...  
  
I do not think I want her to die.


End file.
